3 Bad Habits of Overweight People and How to Avoid Them
While many of us struggle with trying to lose weight, what we often miss is the bad habits that got us into this situation in the first place. Understanding the bad habits that creates obesity is the first step towards making the right corrections so that you can effectively lose the weight and keep it off.
What follows are the top 3 bad habits of overweight people. These habits are the most common and are what generally causes people to eat too much and pack on the excess fat. By avoiding these habits, you can create significant changes in your body so that you can lose the weight and keep it off.
Skipping Meals
This may be a surprising one, but one of the most common traits of overweight people is that they will skip meals. While it may seem that skipping a meal will help you lose weight, the opposite is generally true as overweight people then tend to gorge on the remaining meals. Plus, the body’s metabolism slows down as it goes into “starvation” mode. This condition leads to the greater storage of fat when the next meal is eaten.
You can avoid this situation by eating the right number of meals and do so in smaller portions. In fact, it may be healthier to eat five or six smaller meals that are basically the three normal meals spread out during the day. In any case, you should not skip meals, but if you are not feeling very hungry, eat something light instead.
Eating Larger Portions
One of the trends at fast food places in the past few decades is the introduction of the “large” meals with greater portions. Basically, even though the overall fat content in food has dropped significantly in the past 50 years, we eat much greater portions of food today than during the 1960s which is one big reason why over 35% of the US population is overweight.
Eating smaller portions of food will help curb the calorie intake and bring it down to normal levels. To help in adjusting to smaller portions, one effective trick is to drink a large glass of water 30 minutes before eating a meal. You will not feel as hungry and eat less. Plus, you can have a soup or salad before the meal as well to help you feel full while not packing on the calories.
Failure to Exercise Regularly
Overweight people do not establish the habit of exercising regularly. This creates an imbalance in the body where muscle size and tone is reduced which helps pack on the excess fat. Furthermore, the lack of cardio exercises slows down the metabolism as well. This “on again, off again” trend only keeps overweight people from losing the excess fat.
The first goal is to establish the habit of exercising on a daily basis, even if it means starting with just a few minutes each day. Once that habit is established, then it is important to mix cardio with resistance exercises so that heart can get stronger and the lean muscles build which in turn burns more fat.
